As the number of wireless user equipments has increased, wireless access service providers are increasingly facing challenges in meeting capacity demands in regions where the density of users is relatively high. To increase capacity, a wireless access service provider can deploy a heterogeneous network, which has multiple layers of cells. A first cell layer can be referred to as a macro cell layer, which includes macro cells. Another cell layer can include pico cells, which can be deployed within coverage areas of macro cells to complement the macro cells. Multiple pico cells can be deployed within a coverage area of a macro cell. Generally, a wireless access network node in a pico cell communicates uses lower-powered signaling as compared to a wireless access network node of a macro cell. Macro cells can transmit at powers such as 46 dBm (decibel-milliwatts), whereas pico cells can transmit at power such as 24 or 30 dBm.
In addition to a heterogeneous network deployment that can include multiple cell layers, some communications networks can also support device-to-device (D2D) communication between two or more user equipments. In D2D communication, two or more user equipments in relatively close proximity with each other can communicate directly with each other instead of through a wireless access network node. In some cases, user equipments communicating directly, by employing D2D connectivity, may achieve better performance than communications that have to pass through a wireless access network node. D2D communications can be used to support various applications, including video streaming, online gaming, peer-to-peer file sharing, and so forth.
Some communications networks can also implement relaying, where a relay node can be used to re-transmit a wireless signal to enhance transmissions of user equipments in certain scenarios. For example, at the edge of a cell, a wireless link between a user equipment and a wireless access network node can be relatively weak. In such locations, a user equipment's uplink transmission can be received by a relay node, which can relay (forward) the uplink transmission to a wireless access network node.